The sad spectacle of Republicans in Congress

Editor:

Of all the sad spectacles this world has to offer, among the very saddest is the ongoing behavior of the House and Senate Republicans, ensconced in their Washington bastion and, with indifferent hearts, peering out at greater America. They smugly allow the sequester to slash funding for Head Start, school lunches, food stamps and the disabled. They blame Obama for the increase in the number of Americans on food stamps, calling him the food stamp president, when, in fact, it was the reckless policies of Bush-Cheney that put so many more people on food stamps, half of them children.

These same Republicans remain actively engaged in protecting subsidies for big oil, tax breaks for mega-corporations (one fourth of them pay no taxes whatever), preventing regulations on Wall Street, and industries degrading the environment and endangering health and safety of their workers. Instead of creating jobs, they busy themselves with such noble legislative actions as repealing the Affordable Care Act (38 times and counting), taking a prurient interest in women’s reproductive organs, and mounting investigations that go nowhere, led by Chairman Issa, the household dog. His modus operandi is to make accusations, then sniff about for evidence, suppressing those facts that do not support his charges. When Issa’s IRS witch hunt ran up against the statements of an IRS employee — a self-proclaimed conservative Republican — that refuted Issa’s claims, he took care to redact that information.

The mission of these noble Republicans is to thwart Obama at every turn, even at the expense of prolonging the hardships of so many of our struggling citizens. They get excited about the voter suppression movement in some key states, but show little interest in meaningful immigration reform. Fortunately, with the defeat of Romney-Ryan, we escaped a compounding of the assault on our middle class. To the White House, Romney would have brought the virtue of being absolutely out of touch with common humanity, with Ryan adding Ayn Rand’s narcissistic “everyone for himself,” and robber baron economics.